Semester Reflections

Semester 3

This semester has proved a valuable portion of my art education. At least partially, due to the power art holds in advocacy and how we experience the world. Art has the power to recontextualize the world around us by demonstrating everything as fact or fiction. For instance, art as a means of protest, the topic of my capstone, utilizes a variety of methods and mediums to demonstrate anti-establishment, equity, anti-war, and civil rights movements. Something like satire can demonstrate the fact and fiction of the world around us and serve as an impactful form of art to change hearts and minds. The creative process can be translated into a number of ways, for instance the pitches we construct to make our world translatable in the first place. The creative process exists in chaos and a whirlpool of discovery and thorough research and experimentation. Feedback exists for us to consider the audience, to think of how our work will be received, or how it could be improved. How our messages come across is critical to ensure we don’t become tone deaf to the impact of our own work. With regard to my personal experiences, art as a mechanism for beliefs and values came most into play with algorithmic knitting, one of the courses I took this fall and, specifically, how a medium like knitting can be used to convey binary code, or coding of any sort. How algorithms exist everyday in the world around us, and the processes we create as humans need to be understood in technical and psychological ways. My expressions in knitting were helped by Arts scholars in my understanding of their broader application as works of advocacy. With algorithmic knitting, a course I took as a part of the information studies college, the knowledge I learned in scholars contributed to my understanding of the applications of the course, and the ability to turn coding into works of applicable art, to make something speak without needing to write it, as it were. Working amongst my friends, my roommates who are in scholars, was critical to my improved experiences this semester, in every which way, and the ability to be around creatives and people who care about art and its messaging was important to my finding community and my college life. I try to contribute as best I can to the scholars community, as the leader for Cambridge Community Queers and Allies, as a friend and active participant. I wish I could have contributed more, but I fear this semester did take a toll. Exploring experiences different from your own is critical to our very existence as human beings. A sounding board isn’t just in bad taste, but dangerous. Why operate in a space without a variety of specialties, or backgrounds? Because everyone agrees with you. Everyone needs to be challenged and consider the input of others for the sake of artistic innovation and experience. I couldn’t have done what I did for our capstone without Dean pushing me along the way, I couldn’t have done what I did in algorithmic knitting without the professor pushing and teaching us.